Sundance ups Trevor Groth

16-year veteran succeeds John Cooper

The Sundance Institute has promoted Trevor Groth, a 16-year veteran of the Sundance Film Festival staff, to the festival’s director of programming.

He succeeds John Cooper, who became the fest’s director in March after Geoff Gilmore ankled the slot for the chief creative officer post with Tribeca Enterprises.

Groth had been a senior programmer, handling both narrative and documentary feature selection and leading the short film section. Sundance said that Groth will head the six-person programming team responsible for overseeing the festival’s onscreen and offscreen events.

“Trevor possesses excellent taste in film and with it a keen eye for finding those rare diamonds in the rough,” Cooper said. “He has long championed the offbeat and the experimental, but as a means of drawing in audiences, not alienating them.”

Groth began working for the Sundance Institute’s filmmaker labs and development program while still a student in film school at the U. of Utah. He joined the festival’s programming staff in 1993 and was named senior programmer in 2003.

“Having started out as a volunteer at the festival when I was in high school to now being the director of programming has been an exhilarating journey,” Groth said.